Duma
by Zyrano
Summary: The Kettle of Liberation unlocked more than just Ranma's Jusenkyo curse.
1. Chapter 1: Betrayal

Author's Note: I found this today during a lull at work on my hard-drive. I wrote this a few years ago in German and then more or less forgot about it until today. Seeing as I had nothing better to do and my co-workers had left hours ago (work-moral in Kenya is almost non-existent, from a Germans point of view at least) I started translating. I have more written and will post it as soon as I finish translating. Also keep in mind; English is not my first language, so if I mangle the language too badly feel free to tell me. As always comments and reviews are welcome, just keep 'em constructive or at least civil.

Thank you and enjoy!

* * *

Duma

Ranma wasn't feeling all that good, well actually he felt like shit. Not even 12 hours ago he'd fought against the prince of the Musk dynasty to unlock his curse and the curses of Ryoga and Mousse. During the course of the fight Mt. Houraisan had lost it's tip, but he Ranma Saotome again had done the seemingly impossible and won the fight against the descendant of a dragon, whose Ki reserves were large enough to give Cologne and Happosai pause. But now it was a struggle to take three steps without stumbling.

Ranma knew he had high fever. He had after all sweat enough to soak through his clothes, combined with the cold wind this had been enough to trigger the hated curse that turned him into a girl. Besides the fever she also had a headache of truly epic proportions. It felt like someone was squeezing her head in a vice, while someone else from the inside tried to expand it by hammering the inside. As if that wasn't enough her senses also seemed to have gone haywire. One moment everything suddenly turned dark enough she couldn't see her own hand right in front her eyes, the next everything was impossible bright. And this was happening to all her senses.

Her joints felt like they were filled with molten lead, every little movement caused excruciating pain. She couldn't even move the last digit of her right pinky finger without wanting to scream in pain. But all of this was nothing compared to the soul charring agony in her left shoulder. When they angry throbbing pain had started she'd taken a short look at her shoulder and had nearly gasped in shock. Angry red spots doted her shoulder in a pattern that reminded her of an animal's bite like a wolf's. But even during the endurance training at the beginning of the 10 year training journey no wolf had ever bitten her in the left shoulder.

Suddenly the world went out of focus and Ranma tipped forward a pain filled groan escaping her. She hit the wet forest ground with a dull thud. She did not even have enough energy to scream in pain when she hit the ground, she just laid there and tried not to let her backpack's weight suffocate her.

Ryouga and Mousse heard Ranma hit the ground and stopped their trek back home to turn and look and Ranma's fallen form. They'd noticed Ranma's declining health some time ago. How could they not with her slow shuffling and the barely noticeable pained moaning. So far they had ignored the signs, the bastard could cook in his own juices as far as they cared. But looking at her now almost made them regret ignoring the signs.

It was a shock to them to see Ranma lying flat on the ground in her cursed form, even though there was no water in sight. The loud dry rattling sound she made every time she forced air into her lungs just made it worse.

Their rivalry took a backseat in their minds and both rushed to Ranma's side. Ryouga attempted to turn Ranma onto her side but pulled his hand back in shock the moment he touched her soaked shirt.

"Damn, the bastard's burning hot!" he exclaimed surprised.

Now forewarned about the unnatural heat coming from Ranma, Ryouga slowly turned her onto her side while Mousse freed her from her backpack. Without the weight of her backpack Ranma's breathing got easier but was still sounding far from healthy. Nervous Mousse tried to feel her pulse while Ryouga noticed Ranma's left shoulder.

"I can't count the beats, her heart is beating too fast!"

"Holy shit, look at this!" Ryouga pulled Ranma's shirt to the side, revealing what looked like an infected bite wound.

After staring horrified for almost five minutes at what had been a shoulder and now was angry red mess of raw flesh, they'd decided to set up their camp right there. They had quickly dressed Ranma's shoulder, then wrapped her in her sleeping-bag and shoved the whole mess into her tent. They were careful to give the tent a wide breathe, after all whatever struck down Ranma could be infectious.

It was getting dark and both rivals were sitting before a small fire occasionally throwing worried looks at Ranma's tent. Both hadn't said a single word after finding Ranma lying on the ground. In the silence both could hear that the rattling of Ranma's breathing that had taken on a definite wet undertone. Ryouga was poking listlessly around the embers of the fire determinedly trying to ignore the sickening sounds coming from one of the three tent surrounding their small camp. Mousse for his part had been polishing the same spot of one of his countless swords for hours. Said spot could by now be used as a mirror.

An especially loud rattling breath came from the tent ending in a coughing fit accompanied by several dry cracking sounds made both of them look at each other worried.

"What do you think we should do now?" Mousse asked what both of them had been thinking for some time.

"Maybe we should try to get her to a hospital?"

Mousse shook his head. "I don't know about you, but I have no idea where the next hospital is and Nerima is still at least three days of travel away. Besides, who knows if what she has is infectious? I don't want to get whatever it is what she has!"

"Don't look at me, I have no idea where we are." Ryouga shook his head. "And I certainly don't want to touch THAT again."

They both knew he could only mean Ranma's shoulder. Before Ryouga had used disposable gloves, Mousse had found them somewhere in his sleeves, to dress Ranma's shoulder. But those had been the only pair of gloves Mousse had with him and Ryouga had tossed them into the fire after he had finish dressing the shoulder.

For a moment Mousse looked around the small campsite nervously, not that he could see much with his bad eye-sight. "You think whatever bit him is still around?"

A cold shiver ran down Ryouga's spine. So far he had avoided thinking about what could have caused such a wound. "Maybe it was one of those Musk freaks?" He asked hopeful.

"No," Mousse said decidedly, "they've bred animal traits into their bloodlines, but they can't take the shape of an animal. And that's definitely an animal bite."

"So what do **you** think we should do?"

Mousse looked around distrustfully for a moment before leaning towards Ryouga. "If whatever bit Ranma is still around and wants to finish what it started, what do you think we should do?"

Ryouga also looked around making sure nobody was listening to them before he leaned towards the almost blind amazon warrior. "What are we going to tell the others? We left Ranma behind to be devoured by some kind of monster?" He held up his hand to stall Mousse's protest. "Don't get me wrong, I want to get rid of him as much as you do and I certainly do not want to defend him from whatever has bitten him or touch that shoulder again." He shivered remembering how the hot raw flesh had felt when he had bandaged the shoulder. "I just want to know what we are going to say so that they won't force us to go back here."

Mousse stared at his mirror-polished sword with an expression of utter concentration. "What if we couldn't find him after Houraisan collapsed?" He asked looking up from his sword.

An evil smile appeared on Ryouga's face as his mind picked up the idea and ran with it. "Nobody could say we hadn't looked for him. After all we found his backpack underneath all the rubble just not him." The smile turned dreamily. "And Akane would finally be free of the bastard so that I can take my rightful place at her side!"

Mousse also started to smile dreamily. If someone had seen the two martial artists now he would have rightfully questioned their sanity. Mousse uttered only a single word, a name to be precise, that was enough to seal Ranma's fate.

"Shampoo."

It took a few moments for them to free themselves from their daydreams.

"When do we leave?" Asked Ryouga eagerly. He couldn't wait to tell Akane the happ...erm...sad news and then soothe her in his arms.

"We should wait until dawn, I don't want to walk around here in the dark with some kind of beast out there with us."

"What if it attacks the camp?"

"We'll keep watch and make a bigger fire, if it still attacks we'll toss Ranma in front of it's feet and get away from here fast."

Ryouga could agree with that but there was still something nagging him. "What if there is no monster out there?"

Mousse scoffed. "Listen to her! Bitch's gonna croak soon anyway."

Ryouga nodded, that much was painfully obvious. He would have preferred to leave now rather than later, as to not risk hearing Ranma draw her final breath, but without Mousse leading him it would take him weeks if not month to get back to Nerima. And if there really was something out there, he'd rather not run around in the dark if he could help it.

So they tossed more wood into the fire, built traps around the camp and used up Mousse's whole supply of coffee to stay awake. The caffeine overdose combined with some exotic noises Ranma made in her coma soon had the young martial artist believe that there really was something out to get them.

When morning finally arrived they were nervous wrecks with bloodshot eyes sitting before the last dying embers of their fire. Quickly with all possible haste they started to break up their camp keeping Ranma's tent for the last.

When there was nothing else to pack up Mousse slowly hesitantly unzipped the opening to Ranma's tent and peeked inside. Ranma was breathing a bit more easily now but not much. Her forehead was wet with cold sweat and the normally lustrous red hair was dull and plastered to her skull. Mousse could have sworn it somehow looked brighter with some dark spots in it but dismissed it as a weird effect of the morning light. They both grabbed the foot-end of the sleeping-bag and hauled it including contents out of the tent. After a minute of indecision they shook the sickly martial artist of of her sleeping-bag; it would have looked weird if the sleeping-bag was missing.

Both drew back in shock once Ranma was free of the sleeping-bag and they got a good view of her. The formerly white bandages were soaked with sweat, blood and something else that gave the whole thing a very unhealthy color. Her joints seemed to have swollen to double their original size in the course of the night.

Seeing that Mousse commented. "I don't think she's going to live long enough to see today's sundown."

Ryouga couldn't help but agree, Ranma looked half-dead already. Still he tried not to think about it as he rolled up the sleeping-bag and made a mental note to air it out later that day so it wouldn't start to mold. Mousse for his part tried to distract himself from the grisly sight Ranma made by contemplating if he should put up the tent tonight to air it out.

Had they looked at least once in Ranma's direction, they would've noticed her being awake and looking at them with eerie green eyes. Unable to move anything but her eyes, Ranma had no choice but to watch her two rivals pack up and leave her to die. In this moment Ranma could understand the helplessness Akane must feel every time some freak kidnapped her to reach his twisted goals. The sheer impotence of not being able to do anything but lie there was maddening. She had never in her life felt as helpless as she did when Ryouga and Mousse, backpacks shouldered, left her line of sight. Tears were streaming down her face unhindered as she wordlessly begged them to come back to not leave her to die alone. But they didn't hear Ranma's silent begging.

Gathering what little was left of her strength she tried to turn herself on her stomach, to get up and follow the traitors. But no matter how hard she tried, Ranma couldn't move a single muscle. Finally overwhelmed by despair and rage of being betrayed this maliciously and having to die as a girl, her lips parted and she screamed her frustration towards the heavens. Half-way through the scream her jaws suddenly opened and her scream became one of unbridled pain and then something else entirely as her whole body began to change. Whatever was happening Ranma wasn't conscious long enough to witness it finishing.

Ryouga and Mousse froze on the spot when they heard Ranma's scream. They were about to turn around when the scream turned into a high pitched screech of pain and then into something that sounded like the call of a large predator. Cold sweat appeared on their foreheads and both started shivering like old leaves in a tree during a storm. They'd started to get doubts about their plan not even 20 meters away from the camp, after all Ranma definitely wouldn't have left them behind. Their doubts almost made them turn around the exact moment Ranma's scream started.

Turning back now, after hearing what they did, appeared pointless to both of them, because by now Ranma had to be dead. The beast spreading out her intestines over the whole camp, the expression of stark terror forever frozen on her face, at least until the beast ripped her face of the skull. Their imagination, still on a caffeine high, provided the matching images.

With faces lacking all traces of color they looked at each other. They had to make a decision. To do the right thing; go back avenge Ranma's death and to pay for their sin, or to run away like kicked dogs with their tails between their legs. In a moment of absolute clarity both came to the same decision, nodded at each other and ran as fast and far as their legs could carry them.


	2. Chapter 2: Awakening

Duma

Chapter 2: Awakening

Ranma didn't know how much time had passed when she regained consciousness. It had to be at least a few hours, seeing as the sun was high in the sky. She yawned and stretched her limbs. That out of the way, she started to look around and got the first surprise of the day. All her senses were sharper than ever before; even when she had channeled Ki to enhance her senses she hadn't even come near this.

She could hear a squirrel about a hundred meters away from her nibble on a nut. After a moment of concentration she could even make out the exact direction the sound came from. Slowly Ranma climbed to her feet, so distracted by her new ultra-sharp senses she didn't even notice she was standing on four instead of two legs. Drawing two deep breaths, she could smell the cold fire-place as well as two other scents she pegged as those of Ryouga and Mousse. All three scents, her new sense of smell told her, were old, at least two days old. That thought stopped Ranma thought-processes cold. _How do I know that Ryouga's and Mousse's scent is at least two day old?_

Thinking about that mysterious knowledge Ranma began to pace until a small breeze carried the acrid scent of old sweat to her nose. Disgusted she started looking for the origin of the bad smell. It was her old drawstring pants and her red silk shirt, both lying ripped on the ground near were she had woken up. Cautiously she approached the destroyed clothing and gave them a throughout examination. The shirt and pants didn't look like they'd been ripped during a fight, more like they had burst from trying to contain something much too large for them. Besides that she could only smell what she assumed to be her own scent, which gave her hope that Ryouga and Mousse hadn't done something unforgivable to her before hightailing it.

Again something stopped Ranma's thought-processes in their tracks. _If those are my clothes on the ground, then what am I wearing right now? And why am I not feeling cold?_ Looking down at herself only brought a pair of legs, covered in golden yellow fur with black spots, ending in clawed paws, covered by the same fur, into view. A bad foreboding feeling grew in Ranma's gut. Slowly she tried to lift her right hand up into her line of sight, instead the right paw lifted of the ground. Swaying she quickly put the paw back on the ground. Now she was feeling cold, not from the low temperatures, but from the bad foreboding feeling in her gut. Unconsciously using her new improved senses Ranma started searching for water.

A good 20 minutes later Ranma found herself staring resignedly at her reflection in the water of a small slow flowing stream. One of the many things her father had always preached was know your enemy. Unlike her father Ranma had taken this to heart and had, after the Neko-ken training, started to learn everything there is to know about cats in general. So far that knowledge hadn't helped her much. When you are standing paralyzed by fear in front of a tiger the knowledge said tiger is strong enough to rip of your head with a simple swipe of it's paw isn't exactly reassuring nor helpful.

Ranma quickly and without problems identified herself as a cheetah. While her fur pattern and the large nostrils matched those of a cheetah her size and built didn't match the picture of the slim wild-cat. Sure the main characteristics of a cheetah, large chest, little to no body-fat and long tail, were there but size and muscle-mass were more like those of a tiger.

_That's just typical, not only do I suddenly turn into a cheetah, I turn into the freaking Arnold Schwarzenegger of cheetahs!!!_ Sighing she sat on her haunches and unconsciously draped her tail over her front-paws, making her look like an overgrown house-cat. Something started nagging her in the back of her head. It surprisingly took Ranma some time to figure out what as nagging her. She hadn't flinched or even stuttered while thinking about the evil hell-spawns aka cats. A wide somewhat goofy grin appeared on her face and if had been able to she would have slapped her forehead. _Of course I'm not afraid of cats I am one!_

She paused, rolling that thought around her head, trying to determine if she really wanted to accept this strange transformation just because she had lost her embarrassing fear of cats. She did not need to wait long for an answer. _If it means I won't be afraid of cats ever again, sure!_ Still maybe it would be better to put this to the test. Course of action decided Ranma started to search for civilization and the associated house-cats.

Finding the next city wasn't a problem, waiting for darkness with an empty stomach on the other hand was. Fortunately finding something to eat so far up north in the wilderness of Japan wasn't a large problem for the new wild-cat. Tracks of a wild boar were quickly found and followed to the originator. Now 20 meters downwind of the boar lying in wait in a piece of shrubbery and watching the boar eat Ranma had found a new problem. How should she kill the pig and what should she do afterward? Making a fire without opposable thumbs would be downright impossible and eating the pig raw didn't sound very appealing. Her thoughts concerning the fate of her potential dinner were interrupted by a loud angry growling coming from her stomach.

The boar of course heard the loud growl. Even though it had never encountered a cheetah before it knew said cheetah was planing on having it as dinner. Survival instinct took over and the boar fled, which was a bad mistake considering the way this particular predator hunts. Ranma just saw the boar fleeing before suddenly her hunting instinct took over and she was off like a shot after the boar. Luckily for the new cheetah she had found the boar near the edge of the forest and the boar now was running toward the bordering grassland.

The moment the pig left the forest it's fate was sealed. Inside the forest it may have had a chance to loose Ranma but on an open field the boar had less than a snowball's chance in hell of survival. As soon as Ranma way was free of roots, trees and assorted other stuff found in a forest she shot forward with an incredible burst of speed. In moments she had caught up the her prey and brought it to fall with a simple swipe of a paw. The boar hit the ground hard, rolled several meters while possibly breaking every bone in it's legs and came to rest lying on it's side gasping for breath. Ranma still on autopilot clamped her jaws shut around the boar's throat and squeezed her dinner's airways shut.

A short time later her prey was dead and Ranma found herself facing the same dilemma as before. Making a fire was impossible and eating raw flesh was still as unappetizing as before. Again her stomach took the decision of her shoulders. A loud growl, that sounded definitely animalistic in nature, made her decide to simply give raw flesh a try.

45 minutes later only a few fleshless bones and the hide of the boar remained. Ranma feeling contend and well fed slowly moved away from her first kill in search for a place to sleep. Looking for other cats, to test if she was still afraid of them, would have to wait until after her nap.

* * *

Now two weeks after Ranma's first hunt, he had learned a great many interesting things. The most important first, he isn't afraid of cats anymore, in fact he feels quite content in their presence. Furthermore, to his great joy, he had found a natural hot spring and discovered hot water still returned him to his rightful gender though it did not turn him back into a human. Still, finally being **male** again is a very good thing in his book.

Then there were the ridiculously high speeds he could run at. During the one time he had run all out he was pretty sure he had almost broken the sound-barrier. Of course he didn't know if he really came close to breaking the sound-barrier, without someone measuring his speed all he could do was guess, but he was pretty sure he had come close. Sadly that one attempt had left him wiped out and for the next six hours he wasn't able to to more than lie on his side and pant for breath. More experimenting showed him he had a cruising speed of somewhere above 300 kph that he could maintain for hours on end.

Finally there was the failed hunt a few hours ago. It started like every other hunt, he had found an animal that looked like a tasty meal and was standing on open territory so he could easily chase it down. He had sneaked up on the deer from downwind, a lesson he had quickly learned, and was just about to reveal himself to start the chase when something hit his left hind-leg and threw him to the ground. Moments later he heard the report from a rifle and immediately played dead. With sorrow he saw his dinner run away unopposed. He didn't linger long on his missed dinner opportunity as he suddenly felt a strange prickling in his wounded leg.

Dumbfounded he watched the deformed slug being pressed out of the wound by his rapidly healing flesh. Once the bullet fell to the ground the hole closed and new fur sprouted over the place were the wound had been. The whole thing had maybe taken two seconds and Ranma was sure he could already fully use his leg again. Which became necessary a few moments later when the hunter who had shot him approached. He could have kicked himself as he saw the hunter climb down the very same raised hide Ranma had noticed but dismissed as unimportant earlier before he had started stalking the deer. A mistake, he swore to himself, he wouldn't repeat again.

Ranma's problem now wasn't the hunter who had shot him as that was easily explained. He had been in this area for almost two weeks now and the people living here probably had found the remains of his meals. After all, after he had conquered his aversion of eating raw flesh he hadn't been very picky about what to hunt down and eat. Likely it had been the half eaten bear with it's broken neck and torn out throat that had attracted the hunter. Said bear had given him a great fight, but from a culinary point of view had been pure disappointment which is why he had only eaten half. He had also made the mental note to avoid bears in the future, they were just too much work to kill and then did not even have the good sense of tasting good!

No, what was really bugging the hell out of him was how abnormally fast, even for him, his injuries now healed. After leaving the hunter behind to eat dust he made some tests with barbed wire. If not for the sharp pain of cutting himself he wouldn't have been able to tell something had happened a few moments after he had injured himself. The sometimes deep and grisly cuts had healed in the matter of moments, leaving no traces something had happened in the first place. Finally he had gone so far as to deliberately step on a rusted nail. It had hurt like a bitch but the moment he lifted his paw off the nail the injury had almost instantly healed.

Now Ranma wasn't dumb, he already had a theory to explain how he was healing this fast, he just had troubles accepting that were-cheetahs like him really do exist. Still there were too many things speaking for that theory. The continued presence of his Jusenkyo curse that only affected his gender for one. If it had been a Jusenkyo curse; hot water would have turned him into a human and not into a male cheetah. And he really doubted that the locking ladle was able to lock just one specific curse. Another point in favor of the were-cheetah theory was his vivid recollection of the bite-wound on his left shoulder, even though he still couldn't remember where he had gotten said wound. Further points in favor were his fast healing itself and his built that was just too large for a normal cheetah.

On the other hand there was the fact moon-phases had apparently no effect on him. A few days ago had been full moon and Ranma had felt not the least bit different than before. And all the stories he had heard about were-folk had said the moon had some kind of influence on were-folk even when they could change form whenever they felt like it. _Then again those stories always were about were-wolfs and not were-cats or even were-cheetahs._

He figured he could test his theory with silver, but ultimately decided against it because if he was right then silver could and probably would kill him. Fortunately there was another way to test his theory. Since the moon-phases had no discernible effect on him it stood to reason that he could change forms at will. If he could change back into his human form or into some kind of hybrid-form then all questions would be answered. But before that he had better relocate his happy behind. The south was sounding nice and he could vaguely recall visiting a Shinto temple down there during the training trip to learn Kendo techniques. Said temple, if he remembered right, was somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a forest near Okayama.


	3. Chapter 3: Meetings V2

A/N for rev. 2: Thanks to a review from Bree R. I realized that the part of this chapter where Ranma meets Sasami needed work. So I revised that part and replaced the originally posted version with the revised version. Except for the aforementioned part everything else **should** be the same.

* * *

Duma

Chapter 3: Meetings

_Two days later:_

Shigeru Aoba was having a bad day. He was sitting in the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka thinking hard about what to do now. Just earlier today he had failed the Tokyo University Entrance Exam and he had failed **badly**. Even though he had spent the last three months learning just for this Exam the moment the Exam started he had forgotten everything. Just yesterday he would've been able to recite all questions and answers forward and backward from memory. Now he had to think about what to do now; he had been so confident that he would ace the exam that all of his plans for the future revolved around being a Tokyo-U student.

Now all that remained of that dream was the overpriced video-camera he bought yesterday to record his triumphal entrance into the sacred halls of Tokyo-U. Frustrated he looked out of the window and wondered once again what to tell his family. He was just about to turn away from the window, to maybe start a conversation with the businessman in the seat beside him, when he saw something that almost caused him to forget to breathe.

Parallel to his window on the high-speed rail-line of the Shinkansen ran a cheetah. Now it's already very unusual to see a cheetah outside a zoo or a circus in Japan, but to see one running beside a bullet-train and keep up took the cake. A short look at the display showing the current speed of the train showed that they were currently traveling at 245kph and the cheetah didn't even look like it was straining to match the speed. Slowly with suddenly nerveless fingers Shigeru dug out his video-camera from the backpack sitting on the floor between his feet. Carefully he turned the camera on and zoomed in on the spotted cat.

Although he could see the cat through the viewer as well with his own eyes he still couldn't believe what he was seeing. Another sort look towards the display, this time with the camera, showed they were now traveling at over 260kph.

"What's so interesting out there?" the businessman beside Shigeru suddenly asked.

Shigeru didn't answer immediately or even gave indication he had heard the question, he just kept the camera trained on the cat.

"See for yourself, you wouldn't believe me," he finally answered.

Intrigued the businessman stood up, leaned over Shigeru and looked out of the window. A moment later his jaw would have given Shigeru an concussion if it weren't firmly attached to his face.

"T-that's impossible!" he exclaimed breathless.

Meanwhile the cheetah had noticed his audience, turned his head to look at the dumbfounded men, gave them a cheeky smile and stuck his tongue out at them, before increasing his speed and vanishing out of sight towards the front of the train. The businessman sunk boneless back into his seat.

"Did that cheetah just blow us a raspberry?"

"Yeah," Shigeru replied shortly and stared at his camera like it was made from pure gold. An idea formed in his head and a wide grin appeared on his face.

* * *

Two and a half weeks Ranma finally reached his goal richer by some experiences he could have done without. He was now painfully aware that racing a bullet-train and grinning into a camera was a BAD idea. Thanks to this little stunt it had taken him two and a half weeks to travel a distance that at the speeds he could travel should have taken only hours. The reason for that were the countless hunters, camera-teams from TV-Stations and miscellaneous folks that were after his hide after seeing the video. Ranma was pretty sure to have actually spotted an amazon hunting party three days after his race with the train.

So he had spent the last two week dodging lunatics with rifles out the get their fifteen minutes of fame. Finally he had given them the slip by laying a false track leading towards the north while he continued south. Thank god those lunatics thought, cheetahs were as hydrophobic as normal house-cats. She had reached Okayama soaked to the bones, female and in a very foul mood and immediately vanished into the forest surrounding the city, all the time making sure not to leave any tracks behind.

The first two days Ranma spent with looking for a place to hide in case of an emergency. She found such an place in the form of a cave near the Shinto temple she had remembered from the training trip. The entrance to the cave was secured with an old rusted trellised gate that was luckily unlocked and could be closed and opened by a cheetah, if said cheetah didn't mind the taste of rust. The interior of the cave was quite spacious and even contained a small stream running through a deeper lying chamber that definitely wasn't natural in origin. After securing her emergency hideout Ranma made her primary camp at the foot of the mountain on the opposite side from the cave entrance.

Admittedly she hadn't made much progress in regaining her human form in the five days she had already spent in the woods, but Ranma wasn't the type to give up. With dogged determination she spent several hours each day in meditation and then almost as many hours looking for hot water. During the later she carefully stayed far away from the large house at the base of the lake and the Shinto temple further up the mountain. What was left of the day was spent hunting food, which was easier said than done when you're hunting in a forest where you have to constantly dodge trees. The only thing she had to be careful about was not accidentally running into the pack of wild dogs that roamed the forest.

Of course those dogs weren't really a danger to her, but being ambushed by a pack of wild dogs wasn't exactly her idea of a fun time. After all dog tasted like wolf and wolf tasted like bear and bear tasted awful. She always got the creeps when she thought of Akane using bear-meat during one of her cooking experiments.

Thinking of Akane's horrendous cooking almost always lead to thinking about the girl herself and the rest of Nerima. She could vividly picture the reactions of everyone in Nerima should she go back after regaining human or at least humanoid form. His father would lament about his ungrateful son turning into a were-cheetah but would still push him at Akane. Akane for her part would start calling him perverted beast instead of just pervert. Nabiki would try to milk the situation for every penny it was worth. Kasumi would smile and continue to go about her things as before. Ukyo, already showing signs of having enough, would probably give up and hopefully remain her friend. The amazons were a bit harder to predict; either they'd start to hunt him down or they would redouble their efforts to snare her in marriage. The Kunos simply were too insane to predict with any amount of accuracy. And regrettably she didn't know her mother enough to predict how she would react.

And finally there were Ryouga and Mousse. Ranma still vividly remembered them leaving her behind to die. Normally she wasn't the type to carry a grudge but what these two had done was simply unforgivable in her book. Secretly she had hoped to run across Ryouga, preferably in his cursed form. Except Akane nobody would miss P-chan and Ryouga could have simply gotten lost permanently.

She sometimes wondered if Mousse would make a good Peking-duck. This thought was accompanied most of the time with a nasty grin on her feline face and a watering mouth. As far as Ranma understood amazon tribal law he, as the husband of an amazon warrior, even had the right to demand Mousse's head on a platter.

Then there was the question what those two had told the others about his disappearance. It was likely they cooked up some story about Herb killing her or beating and dragging her back to china to use as a brood-mare or some such bullshit.

Thinking about these things had by now only accomplished that her thoughts were dark enough that continuing to try to meditate was pointless, so Ranma got up and stretched herself extensively in the way only cats seem to be able to. Slowly she started to make her way back to what she called her den, giving the house at the lake a large breath. She had quickly realized that this house was something like the local counterpart of Nerima. The many explosions she could hear coming from the house only firmed her in this belief.

She had almost reached her den when suddenly the strangest creature Ranma had ever encountered jumped out of a piece of shrubbery to land directly before her paws. Ranma blinked at the strange creature and actually took a step back. The animal looked like a cross between house-cat and rabbit and had long brown fur and a strange red gem in the middle of it's forehead. It didn't just look strange it also smelled strange; part animal and part something that could be mineral in nature.

Dumbfounded Ranma stared at the strange creature and tried to make sense of it's very existence, the creature returning the look. It apparently came to a decision and started to make hectic sounds that sounded like variations 'Miyah!'. Then it suddenly jumped back into the piece of shrubbery it had come from. Nonplussed Ranma just stood there and waited. And wouldn't you know it, a few moments later the head of the thing reappeared and it made the same hectic noises in Ranma's direction. Ranma got the message, the thing wanted her to follow. Having nothing better to do, she did exactly that.

Whatever the cat-rabbit-thing was, it was fast. Ranma in short order found herself standing at the edge of a small clearing. To her left a small light blue haired girl was lying on the ground clutching her right ankle. Opposite the girl was the pack of wild dogs Ranma had so far successfully avoided. Growling loudly the first dog jumped toward the girl. Ranma didn't think she just acted.

* * *

It had started with her not looking were she was going and tripping over something hidden under the fallen leaves on the ground. At first Sasami had thought nothing worse than dirtying her clothes had happened, but when she tried to get back up a sharp pain had laced through her right ankle and she had immediately dropped back on the ground with a short cry of pain.

"I think I twisted my ankle," she told the now very concerned looking cabbit. "Could you go and get help Ryo-chan?"

Clearly reluctant to leave her friend behind Ryo-Ohki had darted away from the clearing into the direction of the Masaki house. It would be days later when Sasami realized, if she had asked Ryo-Ohki to change into a space-ship and transport her back to Tenchi's house she would have completely avoided what happened next.

The small cabbit hadn't been gone for long when Sasami heard something rustling across from her in the bushes.

Thinking it was Ryo-Ohki with help she called out. "I'm here!"

The rustling stopped, then suddenly half a dozen gaunt scruffy looking dogs came out of the bushes. For a moment the dogs and Sasami stared at each other before the largest one seemed to come to a decision. Growling the dog advanced on what it perceived as easy prey; it's underlings followed also growling. Panicking Sasami tried to crawl away from the dogs, but it was too late the largest one jumped forward it's jaws opened for the fatal bite.

Sasami had reacted like every little girl does when the dog had come at her; she had ducked down, curled up into a small ball and closed her eyes, hoping somewhere deep inside it would be over fast. The dog never reached her. She heard two bodies hit each other, a short brutally cut of whine of pain and then dull sickening crunch of a body hitting a tree at significant speed. Something moved in front of her and then snarled loudly. In response the small girl curled up even tighter only dimly aware that whatever had snarled had been facing away from her. She clearly heard paws beating a hasty retreat and then nothing.

As nothing had happened after a few moments Sasami allowed herself to hope. Maybe Ryo-Ohki was back with help. Slowly, careful to make no fast movements, she uncurled and opened her eyes. Ryo-Ohki, running toward her from the side, had indeed come back with help. Said help was sitting serenely on it's haunches in front of her giving her would could have been a concerned look. It took her only a moment to realize that she knew this large spotted cat. A cheetah, she recalled the news calling this cat. But the last she had heard everyone believed this cat to be further up in the north.

"But the news said you were up in the North!"

The large cat seemed to grin, giving off an air of smug confidence like saying, of course they do.

* * *

Feeling proud of herself, that everyone still believed her to be in the North, Ranma was totally unprepared when the girl suddenly lurched forward, wrapped both arms around her, buried her face in the fur of Ranma's neck and started crying. Ranma almost bolted right then and there; of all the possible reactions she hadn't expected this to happen. Helplessly, even as a large **female** cat Ranma didn't know how to deal with crying girls, she cast a look at the rabbit-cat-whatever-thing trying to silently convey; do something! The rabbit-cat seemed to get the message and tried it's best to calm the distraught girl down, without noticeable results.

_Okay the rabbit-thing isn't getting anywhere, means I gotta do something before someone else comes and mistakes this! _She could vividly imagine someone stumbling into the clearing and mistaking the situation. Knowing her luck this someone would be some kind of super-powered lunatic that attacked first and asked questions a lot later. A small part of her almost expected Akane to suddenly appear with her mallet already on it's way down to connect with her head as punishment for making the small girl cry.

A half remembered fragment of a text about cats she had once read suddenly popped into her mind. Something about acats purr being known to have soothing affects on people. Seeing no other options open and getting increasingly uncomfortable Ranma started purring. It didn't take long for the purring to show results. The girls sobs eased, then stopped and finally she loosened her vice like grip around Ranma.

"Thank you," the girl whispered.

Ranma nodded, but started wondering what she should do now. Leave? No, too dangerous the dogs could come back. Puzzling out her next course of action Ranma saw the girl trying to stand up and fall back down the moment she tried to put weight on her injured foot. Heaving an internal sigh, knowing nothing good would come from this, Ranma laid down and motioned with her head for the girl to climb on her back.

"You want me to ride you?" Came the astonished question.

Ranma nodded. _At least she's quick on the uptake._ Slowly the girl climbed on Ranma's back and held on to her neck fur when Ranma stood up and slowly started moving in the direction of the house at the lake.

* * *

_No good deed goes unpunished!_ Was the thought that went through Ranma's head when she had reached the house. The large wooden logs standing to both sides of the gate had already given her the creeps. The floating woman with the wild spiked cyan hair holding what for all intents and purposes looked like a light-saber only added to Ranma's bad feeling. But the floating woman was just the first to appear, in fact she had literally just appeared in mid-air brandishing the light-saber. More people filed out the house; a young man Ranma's age with another light-saber, a young woman with purple hair and regal bearing surrounded by at least a dozen small floating logs, an old man in the clothes of a Shinto priest and finally a short red-head a few years older than the girl currently on her back.

It was those last two that really gave Ranma the willies. While the others had impressive auras, Ranma was sure she'd would've been able to win against them if she still were human. But the priest had the refined aura of a master martial artist capable of wiping the floor with Ranma. And the red-head, well she couldn't put her thumb on it, but Ranma was sure she didn't want to mess with the red-head.

"Sasami get away from that beast!" The purple haired woman with the logs shouted.

Ranma cringed as lightning started to crackle between the logs. She knew the only reason why the woman hadn't already fried her to a crisp was the girl on her back. Nervously she shuffled a step back.

"It's okay!" The cyan haired woman suddenly spoke up, her light-saber vanishing while she floated down to stand on the ground. "Ryo-Ohki says the cat is okay!"

"Are you sure Ryoko?" The purple haired woman asked, lightning still crackling between her floating logs.

"Yes **I am**sure Aeka!" Ryoko said exasperated.

Ranma gave the cat-rabbit thing sitting in front of her a dubious look. When and how had it said that? Further thoughts were interrupted by Aeka rushing forward and pulling Sasami from Ranma's back. The others approached more slowly, with only the young man looking vaguely uncomfortable approaching a large wild-cat.

Disbelieve widened Ranma's eyes when the saw a semi-transparent computer appear in mid-air right in front of the small red-head who immediately started typing on the floating construct. Now Ranma didn't know much about computers, but she knew enough to know that they didn't just appear out of nowhere floating semi-transparent in mid-air.

"Is Sasami going to be okay Washu?" Aeka asked. The red-head, Washu, shot the regal looking Aeka an impressive glare causing Aeka to hastily add. "Chan. I meant Washu-chan!"

Smiling Washu replied. "It's nothing serious just a sprained ankle. I can fix that in a matter of moments!"

Of to Ranma left Ryoko had started to ask Ryo-Ohki about what had happened and actually seemed to be able to understand what the cat-rabbit-thing was telling her in these annoying 'Miyah!' sounds.

Adding to her sense of unreality was that with those people so close Ranma could now smell them. Except for the young man not a single one of them smelled like a normal human and the young man didn't smell entirely human himself. Casting a last quick glance at Sasami, who looked okay now, Ranma decided to leave before she got dragged into whatever weirdness was going on here. Turning around she made for the gate flanked by those large creepy logs.

"You're leaving already?" A voice raspy from age asked from directly beside her, making Ranma almost jump out of her fur in surprise. It was the old man in the Shinto priest clothes.

_How'd he get beside me without me noticing? _

"Too bad," the old priest continued. "It's been a long time since I last spoke with one of your kind. And I really would like to know how you got that Jusenkyo curse."


End file.
